For starters, the car will be based on the current CD4 platform the underpins the Fusion, not the Volvo-derived platform underpining the current Taurus and MKS. The belt line and C-pillar will be more subdued and flat, rather than the Impala-like hump you see here. The rear will have two light bars and the front grille will be integrated into the hood. Certain details are apparently still in flux. Also, the Nano V6 mentioned in the article will be 2.7L rather than 2.9L.

I don’t know, the trunk arrangement looks like a neat idea to me. The pull-out ‘tray’ might be kind of unnecessary, but having the lid rise out of the way might add value. It would definitely add uniqueness, making the Lincoln more than just another version of a Taurus.

You’re right, though, I have no confidence that Ford could mass produce this properly.

“In the image, it’s no further out of the way than could be accomplished with some nice struts.”

That’s what I was thinking.

And the roll-out tray will rob the trunk of some capacity. I’d rather have some stash pockets and D-rings to help organize the trunk and keep items from shifting. But I’m not necessarily representative of a luxury car buyer.

Of course, if you’re really wealthy, maybe you never need to lift things out of the trunk, anyway. Somebody else does it for you.

I thought the D-platform was on its way out? Hasn’t everyone been reporting that the Taurus and MKS are moving to CD4/Fusion platform? Every once in awhile, someone gets a wet dream and says the MKS will be Mustang based. C&D now says its going to be an updated D3/D4 platform.

I know you have reported that, and that’s what I have been told as well. We’ve also talked about the 2.7L ecoboost replacing the 3.5/3.7 in mutliple applications. C&D just needs to get their stuff together.

Without the stow-and-go roof? I’d drop the full length center console too, and make it wide enough for three comfortably in the back seat, or two doing nookie. The whole reason cars took off was because you could do nookie in the back seat, it was more comfortable than the bed of straw in the back of the buckboard. No nookie in the back seat is a violation of all that is true and holy.

Enter room with a large table. One guy is playing with those alphabet refrigerator magnets. He already has the “M” and “K”, and is swapping the third letter to see what looks best. One guy looks like he hasn’t slept in days. He is scribbling with crayons on a picture of a Ford Fusion. Every couple minutes or so, he screams, wads up the paper, and tosses it into a full wastebasket. One guy is edgy and hip. His lab coat has the sleeves torn off. A woman also sits at the table, browsing Amazon with her Iphone.

At least it is lower and leaner and looks less like a bloated whale. I see a bit of Hyundai Azera in the styling. Why can’t we have something that looks like a Lincoln. At least Cadillac is on it’s game.

Until 1985, the Mark series was actually called the Continental Mark [insert Roman numeral], then Lincoln dropped it to (1) differentiate from the upcoming changes to the Conti and (2) be cool like that. Mark VIII will always be known to me as a Continental.

Continental series Lincolns were built from 1938 to 1948. In 1955, Ford Motor Company chose to introduce a new personal luxury car as a successor to the pre-war Lincoln Continental. Ford chose to create a stand-alone division above Lincoln. The new Continental Mark II of the Continental Division adopted a naming convention of “mark numbers”, also meaning “version numbers” or “model numbers”; while used in the European automotive industry, this was also used to identify versions of artillery, tanks, naval vessels, and aircraft. The name was thus equivalent in original meaning to simply “Continental, version 2” or “Continental, model B”, although the name “Mark” later took on a brand-like feel of its own in the minds of many customers. In 1958, the Continental division was integrated into Lincoln, with Lincoln introducing the Mark III, IV, and V to replace the Mark II; they served as the flagships of the Lincoln line. In 1961, Lincoln went from a three-model line to a single Continental; the Mark series was dropped. For 1968, Lincoln restarted the Mark series with the Mark III. Instead of being a flagship model of the standard Lincoln, the Mark III was an all-new car. Based upon the Ford Thunderbird, it was a strict personal-luxury coupe like the Continental Mark II and the 1939-1948 Continental, thus restarting the series at Mark III.While sharing little to no common bodywork, the Mark series would share much of its underpinnings with the Ford Thunderbird for its entire production run from 1969 to 1998. The lone exception is the 1980-1983 Mark VI, which was based on the Ford LTD/Mercury Marquis coupe and Lincoln Town Car; the Mark VI is the only model ever produced as a 4-door.The Mark VIII was Lincoln’s last personal luxury car, sold between 1993 and 1998. The Mark VIII was assembled at Ford’s Wixom, Michigan assembly plant and was based on the FN10 platform. Slightly larger than the Mark VII, the Mark VIII had more interior space than its predecessor and much more power @ 290 to 300 HP and 32 valve aluminum heads and much better handling. The move from the Fox platform allowed for the use of fully independent suspension at all four wheels. Aside from its Ford and Mercury counterparts, the only other American rear-wheel drive cars at the time with this feature were the Chevrolet Corvette and Dodge Viper. The Mark VIII received a minor exterior redesign for the 1997 model year with a larger grille and exterior lights. The 1996 LSC model got 10 hp (7.5 kW) more, true dual exhaust, lower (3.27) gearing and other luxury features. The 1996 LSC was the first car from an American automaker to be equipped with HID headlights, and the 1997 to 1998 models continued the groundbreaking lighting trend with even larger housings for the HID system, and an innovative neon third brake light across the entire rear deck lid. My 1998 Collector Mark VIII number 1149 of 1280 sold in the US is a surprisingly fast, comfortable, and one of the greatest performing cars I have ever owned. With 38,000 miles I am getting excited about getting it out of storage for my 16th summer with it.

“For starters, the car will be based on the current CD4 platform the underpins the Fusion, not the Volvo-derived platform underpining the current Taurus and MKS”

So Ford, why should I buy or lease your Lincoln MK Not Continental if its just a bigger MKFusion? You guys in Dearborn just don’t get it, you’ll just steal sales from MKFusion and carbon copy what the MKS actually is at the moment to a new platform. You’ll spend hundreds of millions to accomplish nothing because you’ve fallen into the GM trap of “the next model will be so much better and it will save us”. I’m not a big fan of what they did to Cadillac but it did work, they built essentially one main somewhat kick-ass model and then slowly added others around it. You can Xerox the Fusion ONCE as a Lincoln but not repeat times, you’re not going to pull a K-car miracle here.

Oh and with regards to the whole China thing, from what I read there is something of a Lincoln Continental mystique among some of the Asian cultures, this is evidenced by rolling out the Detroit iron for Dear Leader’s funeral in 2011. If you built a real Continental along the lines of the mystique it might take off in Communist China, and it wouldn’t even have to be a gas sucking land barge with no handling because lets face it the youth won’t be as interested in one of those. But I know just from working with folks in China they will not be overall impressed with a LWB MKFusion badged as a Conti, they’re not stupid. They like flash, but also demand substance and they’ll be paying high tariffs to buy your (initially) imported car. Really impress them and you’ll have buyers for life, as you’ve failed to impress people here in North America to buy your products new, even Lincoln diehards like myself.

This doesn’t sound like anything particularly revolutionary or exciting for Lincoln, even if the C/D renderings are accurate. Cadillac’s current and future models induce infinitely more ‘want’ from me.

I was just looking at a beautifully restored 1958 Ford Skyliner a couple of weekends ago at a local car show. If they could engineer that back then, they should have no trouble engineering this kind of a trunk now [not that the Skyliner was ever likely trouble-free!]

So achingly close, but no Monte Christo. No V-8, No RWD. The trunk will be a love/hate thing. I like it, but make the slide out a key-fob controlled decision. Betcha you’ll leave it on slide out most of the time. The suicide doors are some great eye candy. How will they affect body flex and NVH? One can always hope.

The riff on the MKWhateverTheHellIsTheEquivalentOfTheFlex is especially interesting! The bottom one is a little too close to the 300; Fiatsler should build the Imperial concept that was out years ago. Price it just above the 300 SRT8, with every option known to mankind, plus bespoke options.

I’m still disappointed that only the grille from the MKR actually came to be. I can accept a FWD conti the last gen was fwd, but it needs a V8 if only just to attract people who associate american luxury with a V8.

If you looked at an early to mid 90s Town Car, you knew it was a premium make (or supposed to be). Unless they again quit trying to squeeze premium out of low-buck platforms and engines, and spend the bucks to to it right, it will flop.

I don’t see why the slide out trunk box should be so difficult to engineer – after all GM was doing this back in the early forties with the Chevrolet coupe pickup . I don’t think it was all that popular then and I believe it was dropped when the 1942 models came out .

Every time I see the Continental concept I can’t help thinking how sad it is for Lincoln that the only real Lincoln for sale today is the Chrysler 300.

Sure the Continental concept came slightly before the 300 concept. But Chrysler actually built the 300. And the second generation 300 looks even more like the car that Lincoln should be building.

There is no way that Lincoln is going to get proper classic Continental proportions out of a transverse engine FWD platform. The slab sides, if used, are going to make it even harder to hide the bad proportions.